We are still committed to Cradley and its residents (From Halesowen News)

We are still committed to Cradley and its residents

10:48am Wednesday 4th July 2012 in Letters

Despite recent reports Cradley’s three councillors will continue to fully represent the views of their constituents in the Cradley area at the Halesowen Area Committee.

We are proud to represent all of our area and believe that we do so with the full consent of our constituents.

We always promised our Wollescote constituency that we would return to the Stourbridge Area committee at the earliest opportunity when we were thrown off it by the Tories back in 2004.

We have now done as we promised. We are now full members of both the Stourbridge and Halesowen Area committees.

As to our vote – we can only vote on one committee and decided this would be Stourbridge thus emphasising the importance of our return to that area. As anyone with any gumption knows if it ever comes to a vote on the Halesowen Committee then the Tories have an inbuilt majority of 10 votes to 5 compared to last years 12 votes to 3 so there would be no contest.

But, for the three of us and Dudley Labour Party, we are working to see the end of these unpopular and unworkable committees and replace them with a model based on our own Cradley Forum, which we have kept going despite the Tory moves to make it unworkable some years ago.

Our first Cradley Forum of this year will take place at Providence Methodist Church on Windmill Hill on August 14 at 7.30pm – anyone from our area is welcome and any topic is up for discussion.

Cradley Councillors Tim Crumpton, Gaye Partridge and Richard Body.